acarlson@laurel.math.umass.edu (Adam Carlson) (06/07/91)
I am a Sysadmin of a small (2 Sun's) computing center at my university. I have only been using unix for +/- 2 yrs and Sysadminning (is that a verb?) that whole time. I recently got traceroute because we're having a connection problem to a remote site and the README said that it requires some kernel hacking. (I can actually run it without said hacking, so I don't know what it's supposed to do for me.) I figure this is as good a place as any to get into this realm of my job, but as this could have major repercussions to the system I decided to pray to the net.gods first. What I would like is advice for the uninitiated. Starting from: where do I get source code (will the stuff on uunet/bsd-sources work with my system or do I need to get them from Sun)? What precautions should I take (obviously a backup of the current kernel, but what else)? What parts of the kernel are really tricky and what is the best way to get a feel for the code (just look at the source, read some books, meditate until I have achieved oneness with the System?) And what are the best references for this type of work? (I've checked the YABL and only found "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix Operating System", this doesn't sound like a beginners reference.) BTW, I am on a Sun 3/80 running SunOS 4.1 (soon to be 4.1.1, if I stop hearing bug reports). Thanks -- Adam Carlson | It's good to know that if I behave acarlson@math.umass.edu | strangely enough, society will take Statistical Consulting Center | full responsibility for me. UMass @ Amherst | - Ashleigh Brilliant